robcat2075

I don't know why it's not there. They sell a 1 year license to v15 for $50 whether you own a current version or not so there isn't really an "upgrade price" anymore. your old projects should load fine in it. the last update to V13 was v13t which you can download and use if you are already using v13. that's all i recall of my answer.

I can imagine a program that would look at specially named groups you had created and look at the location of the CPs in them and then weight them semi-correctly, but it would presume a substantial similarity in function and appearance to an "ideal". And the specially named groups would be so elaborate that you might as well just weight the CPs instead. I think well done bone fall-offs might be the best quick and dirty CP weighting compromise. I agree. If you took the time to put all the CPs in the right place to make your character you can take the time to weight them.

I'd keep the music sheet out of frame until he gets to "torn up a huge section". Then lift it up to reveal a big hole torn out of the middle. 34- slap to forehead seems too soft. It's probably slowing in. The fingers are probably taking too long to finish their overlap also. I see some head squetch on the impact, but I dont' think that's the right motion to convey impact. 138-160 when the head drops in despair, some anticipation and/or overlap onthe way down would help give that weight. in general- too many jaw motions per word, I think.

You can group select a whole bunch of keyframes in the timeline (it's onthe right side of the Project Workspace, ALT-1 to make it appear) and stretch them out to make them happen over more time.

Here's a general thing: Don't pose the eyes in the default, straight-out-of-the-head position. It makes for very dead expressions so as a rule just never, never do it. There are exceedingly few situations where head and eyes pointed in the exact same direction are the best solution. Here are nine shots of Scarecrow with nothing posed except the the head and eyeaimer bones. (You'll have to look at it full size to see clearly) He's looking in the same direction in each one and yet each one suggests a different nuance of thought about what he is looking at. And all of them are more alive looking than the one in the center which has both head and eyes in their default position. Eyes that stay locked in the center look zombie-ish, offset eyes indicate a thinking, alive person.

You can animate the camera to new positions and angles just like any other bone. Move it and a keyframe will be made.

How many keyframes are you talking about? Possibly you could copy-pastemirror each keyframe back onto itself. Tedious and error prone, but possible. other idea... you could scale the model bone *(-1) on whatever the horizontal axis is and use that as a model to match and reanimate a new unscaled instance of the character to. or... you could write a small program to go through the animation file and multiply all the horizontal co-ord it finds by -1. also tedious.

There are a whole matrix of possibilities, which also depend on how you have the Key Bone/KeyBranch/Key model filters set. Here are the essential basics... KeyFrameOptionsMP4.mov

Have you done all the tuts in "TAoA:M"? It will answer a lot of quesitons you will have. #6 "The Door is Stuck" show you how to do it. first you have to be in a relationship, action or choreography window, not the modeling window. rightclick onthe bone, select new>constraint>type of constraint you want then, when the cursor changes to an eyedropper* pick the null or bone you want to constrain to. typically you will make two constraints... translate and rotate to lock one bone to another. * and usually you will pick the "offset" button at this point so the first bone keeps it's relative position

Looks promising! Can't tell if he's got an innie or an outtie

I think JohnArtbox has done quite a bit of R&D into this. you may find help in one of these topics... edit: this may be the one http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...7&hl=ZBrush

Yes that's it. try restarting A:M after you select it. If it doesn't improve things... it doesn't improve things. But easy to try. Easy to go back to Open GL if it doesn't. and what happened when you tried a much smaller image? Do you have the latest drivers installed for your vidie card? You get them from your card manufacturer's site.

Paste Mirror depends on very accurate symmetry of the bones and having the key filters set exactly right.

If you have a complex shadow situation I doubt animating the color of the sprite over time will do. I don't suppose a material effector will affect a sprite after it has been born, will it?

If you're on a PC you've got Direct X. It would be tough to not have it. Tools>Options>Global>Realtime drivers. Try a much smaller image just to test and see what happens. And Make sure it's a targa.

If it isn't possible to turn off ambience on a sprite, you may have to resort to using a particle effect that is an actual 3d shape, meaning the new "water". I think those really exist inthe scene and can be shadowed. You'd have to experiment to get a particle setting that mimics what you were doing with sprites, presuming your sprite really was a blob, not a recognizable image.

It's possible you could recover some parts of it with a text editor, but you'd have to know what to look for. You could post it here and someone might try it. No guarantees. But really... you have an important project and never saved previous versions or a backup? Ouch. unlikely possibility... drag the .prj into A:M rather than "opening" it via the menu.

how big is your image in pixels? try switching OpneGLDirectX in your preferences.

In the model window... right-click>New>pose>percentage in the new "relationship" window that comes up repose the finger in the way you want it to be. Hopefully you have your pose slider window open too (ALT-4). It will highlight your new slider in RED at 100%. you can slide it to other values besides 100% if you want to set the finger in other specific ways at other values. close the "relationship"window when you are done. Now when you use your character in a chor or action you can use that pose slider to make something happen, I don't recommend using a pose slider for that sort of thing, but you certainly can do it.

post a screen shot of what you are doing. Just saying "it doesn't llok likw it does in the picture" isn't enough for us to go on.

Is the "cheekbone" area moving up and down with his jaw something you are doing or is that automatic? It's too active I think.

Quick answer...the modeling will be rather similar to any other character. -make a front and side drawing of the character to use as rotoscopes. -start modeling the features... eyes, nose, mouth.... follow thw same procedure as the tuts on normal characters. -when you're done, "toon rendering" will do a lot to get the flat shaded anime look. HAve you finished the tuts in TAoA:M yet? those will cover a lot of ground you will want to know.

YOu can paint alpha channels by hand but for complex tranparencies like this, it won't do: The Flaming Pear plugin ("Solidify") is free on the web, ya just gotta find it. what it does is convert transparencies in photoshop layers into solid color. why do yo u want to do that? Because you can't just save a transparant layer as a targa and get an alpha in it that correctly represents the transparency. You need to load the transparency info of the visible layer and paint it into the alpha channel, then "solidify" the original image. THEN you can save a targa and it will work as a decal with the intended transparent effects. Gray fringes will result otherwise if you dont' do it that way. No fringes, even on pure white or pure black patches:

That's a photoshop process. Easy to do. Long to explain. You'll need the "Flaming Pear" plugins for PS. There's a thread around here somewhere on it...

glowingsprite.zipa sprite image created with an alpha channel that makes a hazy white fadeout surrounding the main image will look like a glow.